Voters in Maryland [where Murray lives], Washington, Maine, and Minnesota are all voting on gay marriage measures. In the first three states they’re voting on legalization; in Minnesota, they’re voting on a ban. Whichever state legalizes gay marriage by popular vote today will be the first to do so, breaking an eight-year streak. By 10 p.m. or so, it should be clear whether or not Richard Tisei has won a House seat in eastern Massachusetts. If he does it, he’ll be the first-ever elected gay Republican congressman. And later in the evening — if it’s that early — we’ll know whether Rep. Tammy Baldwin has become the first openly gay senator. The potential for a lot of heartbreak here, but for anyone who remembers Prop 8 in 2008, passing hours after the state’s liberals celebrated an Obama win, it’s one hell of a reversal.

Comparing last night’s vote in favor of gay marriage and gay candidates with the traditional marriage amendment passed in North Carolina during the May primary, I wonder if social conservatives invested too much time and attention trying to defeat Barack Obama with Mitt Romney rather than focusing on the balloting that would be of more interest and more lasting benefit to them.

OK, so I am way late to this (busy!!!) and no one will read this comment, but I will never get why Charles Murray supports same sex marriage. I mean, I guess I do. A libertarian like Murray often has a live-it-let-live non-judgmentalism to a fault and, let’s be honest, for a guy working in DC it’s just the cool thing to do to impress your friends (note the Jon Rauch reference).

But Murray’s support of SSM is as if the guy hadn’t read, to say nothing of written, Coming Apart. No one knows more than Murray the tragic results that stem from the mass breakdown of marriage and the related rise of illegitimate births (are we still allowed to say illegitimate?). The costs rising from society’s division of marriage from child rearing (and vice versa) are enormous and easily quantified. I know because I have read that quantification in Murray’s own books. Why take yet another, and perhaps final, step towards making marriage simply about the emotional fulfillment of adults and divorcing (if you’ll forgive the term) it from the rearing of children? This is just the cherry on top of the divorce/shaking up culture. Murray knows that the social benefits of a strong connection between marriage and children are huge. But hey, if he was a vocal opponent of SSM that wouldn’t be, well, cool.